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General Director David Gockley’s final season features some of his favorites: Verdi’s Don Carlo, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Janáček’s Jenůfa and a new production of Carmen. Secure your seats and subscribe today!

San Francisco Opera invites you and your family to attend FREE screenings of our Opera-in-an-Hour Movies presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. To learn about where you can catch a screening of our family friendly operas, click here.

Opera designer and director John Pascoe created the designs for this fanciful and opulent production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia in 2008 with Washington National Opera and Renee Fleming.

With the opening of our third opera of the season less than a week away, we decided to whet your appetite with John Pascoe's gorgeous costume sketches for this production, which marks the first time we have ever ever presented the opera in our history.

Costume designer Jess Goldstein took on a big job when he signed on to design the many costumes for the world premire of Heart of a Soldier. The opera spans six decades and four continents. Just the soldiers alone must be outfitted in gear appropriate for World War II, early 1960s Rhodesia and the Vietnam War. The main characters, Rick Rescorla, his best friend Dan Hill and his wife Susan Rescorla, are not mythical characters but real people--Dan and Susan will be attending this opera when it opens on September 10. To find inspiration for the look of each of the main character's costumes as well as the various locations and time periods depicted, Jess assembled a collection of design inspiration boards. Read on to see the images that inpired each of the costumes seen in Heart of a Soldier.

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.